


His Own Believing

by taeminuet



Series: Two Things Alone [1]
Category: SHINee
Genre: Blood, M/M, Terminal Illnesses, Vampirism, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-07
Updated: 2018-12-07
Packaged: 2019-09-13 09:33:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16890045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taeminuet/pseuds/taeminuet
Summary: This certainly can’t be Jinki. It can’t.But it is now. And it’s all Jonghyun’s fault.In which Jonghyun takes matters into his own hands.





	His Own Believing

This isn’t right, Jonghyun thinks in horror as he watches Jinki tighten his arms around the woman in them. His mouth is against her neck and she’s making tiny groaning noises that snap and clatter off of the walls of the dark alley, raising goosebumps on Jonghyun’s arms.  
  
He feels sick. His skin is crawling, and tension makes his shoulders tighten and his back arch like an offended cat. His mouth is horribly dry which, he supposes, is for the best. He wouldn’t want to be anything but sickened by this.  
  
This isn’t the Jinki he knows, and he knows if he weren’t so shocked and horrified, he would have to suppress the urge to stop the elder. But there’s just so much wrong that he can’t even process that this is Jinki, much less use it to convince himself to push down the sickening jolt of flight-or-fight beginning to knot his muscles in preparation.  
  
He can smell blood. It’s clear and poignant and Jinki is making soft, desperate sounds. The woman in his arms has gone limp. What had been something apparently intimate now looks just as macabre as it had always been, and it sends a warning sense of horrified realization up Jonghyun’s spine.  
  
The Jinki he knows would never hurt anyone. The Jinki he knows would certainly never kill anyone. Hell, Jinki has some sort of moral obligation against even the slightest concept of a death penalty, something that had caused one of their first fights so long ago. The Jinki he knows had once reacted with utmost horror at Jonghyun’s offhanded comment that a goddamn serial rapist should go to death row.  
  
If Jinki couldn’t even handle that, then this certainly can’t be Jinki. It can’t.  
  
But it is now. And it’s all Jonghyun’s fault.  
  
—  
  
“Are you sure?” Kibum asked him, trailing his fingers absently along the back of Taemin’s shoulders and watching the younger sigh and squirm under the touch. There was a smudge on one corner of his mouth, a faint stain of rust red that made Jonghyun stare. Taemin noticed him looking and flicked his tongue out to find the smear and lick it clean, smirking seductively at him all the while. Jonghyun shuddered. He didn’t like Kibum’s protégé very much.  
  
Luckily he didn’t have to pay attention to him, just Kibum. Not that Kibum was all that much better, smirking wickedly as he reminded him, “You know what this means.”  
  
“I know,” Jonghyun said, squeezing his eyes tight shut. “I know, but he’s…”  
  
“It’s probably for the best, really,” Kibum drawled, eyes fixed firmly on Jonghyun, completely unreadable. Jonghyun wondered if he cared or if it was all some strange, amusing game to him. Probably. “You should just let him go. ‘If you love someone’, and all that jazz.”  
  
“No!” Jonghyun protested, feeling his throat close up and his teeth bare in something between a snarl and a grimace. “No, I can’t… Kibum, you  _owe_  me—“  
  
“I owe you nothing,” Kibum said, smiling sweetly. This  _was_  funny to him. “If you want me to help him, you’re going to have to do a lot better than that.”  
  
“What do you want from me?” Jonghyun asked, fully aware of how desperate he sounded, how desperate he  _was_. “It’s not like I can  _feed_  you or anything.”  
  
Kibum let out a bark of laughter, tossing his head back and all but cackling, clapping his free hand down on his knee. From the look Taemin shot him, his other hand had thudded against the younger’s back. “Oh, that’s precious,” Kibum drawled, wrinkling his nose. “Believe me, I wouldn’t feed off you even if I were able. You wolves always smell like wet dog. No, I want  _amnesty_. No retribution for siring another.”  
  
Jonghyun balked. “I  _can’t_ ,” he argued, shaking his head. “I’m already giving you another one by even asking—“  
  
“And I want another of my own,” Kibum growled suddenly, leaning forward, fingers tight against Taemin’s back. “Quid pro quo. You get yours, and I get mine.”  
  
Jonghyun scraped his teeth hard over his own lower lip, jerking his head shortly. “Kibum, it’s… you already…” He jerked his chin at Taemin.  
  
The boy may have looked like he wasn’t much, a wiry half-muscled twink with blond hair and red-lined eyes, but he was a good fifteen or sixteen years older than Jonghyun himself. He had been the first one Jonghyun let slide, back when he was a teenager and Kibum had broken truce for the first time, offering up the lives of a whole nest of other vampires to convince Jonghyun’s family to let him add another child to his own.  
  
Kibum pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Taemin, go eat,” he sighed, and then caught Taemin’s jaw as he made to move, turning the boy’s head to him and staring into his eyes as his voice deepened and flattened to demand, “No more than a pint.”  
  
Taemin nodded and stood, looking sullen, but unable to deny his sire’s command. “Minho’s already woozy. Wouldn’t do to push him too far,” Kibum explained as the blond wandered out of the room, and then hummed. “How are you going to feed yours if I do give him to you, hmm? He can’t take your blood, and I won’t be there to keep him in line.”  
  
“I’ll… I’ll figure it out. Blood bags, or…” Jonghyun swallowed hard. He hated thinking about how Kibum’s kind fed. Some were better than others, but they all drank blood. They had all killed at least one person; it was part of the transition. Vampires were killers. That was the first thing he had ever learned about them, and years of the almost-amiable truce between his own kind and Kibum’s had done nothing at all but prove that.  
  
Kibum made a face. “That’s not a long-term solution and you know it. Cold blood doesn’t last half so long. Best he die now than starve later at your insistence.”  
  
Jonghyun blanched. “No. No!” he insisted, the thought making him tense in horror. He took one more look at Kibum’s face and then let out a defeated whine. “Who are you wanting to turn? Minho? If it’s Minho, I can let it slide—“  
  
“Of course not,” Kibum said with a snort. “He’s already near-immortal. I’ve been feeding on him for the better part of a century now, and I dare say if I took that away from him he would be distraught. Besides, daywalkers are so useful. No, no, Taemin’s got his eye on some little thing from the slums, and I dare say they’d make a pretty pair.”  
  
Jonghyun’s jaw tightened, the urge to refuse rising back up. “Taemin’s not old enough—“  
  
“No, I’m well aware. He doesn’t have the control to drain someone without killing them completely, and I do know the rules; anyone innocent and you’ll rip his throat out. I get it. I’ll do the process. You have nothing to worry about.” Kibum smiled again like that was supposed to be reassuring. It very much wasn’t. “I can do them both at once. I’ll even do yours second; it’s always easier when I’m fully fed.”  
  
“I…” Jonghyun started. He couldn’t imagine Jinki like that, drained of blood, an empty husk waiting to be filled by the blood of others. But he couldn’t imagine a life without Jinki either.  
  
What he _could_  clearly imagine was the face Jinki had worn when he had admitted to Jonghyun that his clumsiness came from far more than poor coordination. He could imagine his eyes when he admitted that the tumor in his brain was going to destroy everything piece by piece. He could all too easily imagine Jinki dying.  
  
But vampires didn’t get sick, didn’t die, not unless they drank the blood of a wolf or were torn to bits by the families of werewolves put in place to keep them properly in check. A family of which Jonghyun was a part. And now Jonghyun was failing his one duty in favor of saving the human he had fallen in love with.  
  
He was such a shitty person, he knew, but at least Jinki would be safe.  
  
“Do it,” he said, and Kibum’s face lit up. “Just the one.”  
  
“Oh, don’t fret so much. You’re only partially failing the entire purpose of your species,” Kibum said, beaming. “Taemin-ah, you can collect Jonginnie tonight if you’d like~”  
  
He didn’t speak loud, but Taemin reappeared almost at once, wiping red from his lips with the back of his hand. “I’ll have to text him and tell him I want to meet up,” he said, voice a little muffled by his slowly-receding fangs. “Should I finally invite him to ‘meet the family’? You know this asshole’s been making mafia jokes for  _weeks_.”  
  
A deep voice chuckled behind him as Minho stumbled after him, dazed, one hand clapped over the side of his throat. Kibum pulled the human in, taking his hand from his neck and licking at the blood dribbling from his wounds. “I’ll feed you in a bit, darling,” he crooned, petting Minho’s hair until the man sank to his knees to lay his head in Kibum’s lap. “We’ll get those closed up and you can rest for a while.”  
  
“You need to drink too,” Minho slurred absently, nuzzling into Kibum’s thigh.  
  
“Not tonight. I’ll be plenty full without your blood for once, or I wouldn’t have had Taemin feed on you. Better he’s not too hungry when I spill his boytoy’s blood though.” Kibum smiled at him like this was genuinely funny, and then looked back to Jonghyun. “Bring yours as well, then. Tonight.”  
  
Jonghyun shuddered and did as he was told.  
  
–  
  
He regrets it now, watching Jinki suck at the neck of some poor passerby, wailing when no more blood comes forth. The woman is dead and Jinki is the one who killed her. The love of his life, and he has turned him into the same kind of monster Jonghyun is supposed to hunt. Not that he’s ever done a good job of that, but this is different.  
  
He should kill Jinki. He shouldn’t let his love crawl away from the woman to tumble into Jonghyun’s lap and gnaw on his throat, unwilling to bite when Jonghyun’s blood smells so unappetizing. But he chews anyways, fangs scraping and mouth wet with blood. “More. Jonghyunnie, more.”  
  
“Kibum said…” he starts, cringing away from Jinki. “One a night. One… one kill a night. No more.”  
  
Jinki pouts at him. ‘No one deserves to die,’ he had said once, vehement and stubborn. ‘No matter what kind of person they are. People shouldn’t get to decide who lives and who dies.’  
  
Now he looks at Jonghyun with wet eyes and crimson lips and says only, “ _More.”_

**Author's Note:**

> Imported from [tumblr](http://taeminuet.tumblr.com).


End file.
